One week and +90 degrees later

Did you know I live in a bipolar state? Yep. I totally do. Here’s why I say that. On Thursday, February 10, our low temp was -12F. That’s cold, I don’t care who you are. Could it be colder? Sure, but I definitely wouldn’t be living there! So anyway. This past Thursday, the 17th, our morning low temp, are you ready? 64F! I am totally serious! We had a 90 degree temp swing, the high that day was 79! One week, heck one day, can make such a difference! I am so happy our snow is gone I can’t begin to tell you. Here, I’ll put it this way. If I were a little yippy dog, I’d be running in circles, tinkling on the floor! How’s that for a visual?

Now, it’s time for me to get off this couch and go outside and play in the dirt, I mean mud. Yay! I hope you have a fabulous weekend, whatever you do!

Welcome to Snowklahoma!

since I really have nothing else to do, enjoy a few pics of our blizzard. We have gotten over a foot of snow so far and it’s still coming down! This is our snowpocalypse! Our snowmageddon. We haven’t gotten this much snow in a single day in over 100 years! And the part of it that sucks is the temp: 10F with a windchill of -8. That means I can’t throw my kids out in it! Booo! We’ve got 3 to 4 foot snowdrifts and the entire metro area is shut down. Seriously, the mall is closed. That equals everything, right?  Emergency vehicles are getting stuck. It doesn’t matter who you are, or what you drive, you’re gonna get stuck! Unfortunately, we do not have the equipment necessary to deal with 1 to 2 inches of snow an hour with 35mph winds. Oh yeah, and my hubby’s flight to San Francisco that’s out at 7AM tomorrow, yeah, that’s been canceled. He thought he was going to escape the fun we’re having here!

The view from my bedroom window during a lull in the storm.

The tree in my front yard. The bricks that are barely visible on the left side are two high and completely buried!

Poor lonely playset. It's too cold to be out there now. 😦

It's so deceptive. The sunshine makes it look not too bad. At the time I took this, it was 5F/-1 windchill!

I thought this was really beautiful. It shows how windy it was and how dry the snow is. No snowmen with this stuff!

This is the view out my SECOND floor bathroom window. It's apparently situated just right to catch a wicked drift! kinda creepy!

So, in the meantime, I’m watching a movie with my daughter, making a cross stitch unicorn, washing laundry and thinking of making peanut butter cookies. Oh, and that three foot deep drift in front of my garage door, that is keeping me from going anywhere. Well that and the fact that the roads are a complete mess and I hate driving on crap roads. So, i”m tucked in, drinking hot tea and hanging with my offspring, my pair and a spare. Hope you are all staying warm and dry wherever you are!

A hair-on-fire weekend

All I can say is thank you God we made it home and I didn’t have to kill anyone or get into trouble for tying my children to the roof of the car! Our niece got married over the weekend outside of Peoria, Illinois. I really wish she could’ve picked a warmer time of year to do it, but since she didn’t ask my opinion on the date, we just had to go with what she wanted.

We have been planning on making the trip for a few months now, with the provision that if there was bad weather, we’d cancel, no doubt. I’m not putting my family in danger for anything. So the forecast for the week initially was looking fine, cold, but clear. Well, you know how weather is, it can be a bit unpredictable at times. suddenly we had on the radar this freight train of frigid air coming our way. One weather man called it a “Siberian Express’ and that’s exactly what it was.  The coldest temps we’d seen in 16 years. Thankfully, we didn’t get any snow out of it, but guess who did! Yup, Peoria got about 8”. yay.

The closer it gets to be time, the worse the forecast looks. Temps close to zero with below-zero wind chills, snow, blowing snow, cold, cold, and FREAKING COLD!  By Wednesday, I’d decided we shouldn’t go. It was looking like a monster storm and after having driven through blinding snow storm once before, I wasn’t too keen on the idea of doing it again. Especially when it wasn’t an absolute necessity. It’s not like I’m out of wine and HAVE to get out!

We woke up to sunshine and no new snow on Thursday. I checked the road conditions and it appeared that it was going to be ok for us to go. The only real problem was the wind and potential for blowing snow. Ugh, that damned blowing snow again. I decided to suck it up, get over my fear and pack up the car for our abbreviated drive. We drove to St Louis, 6 hrs away and stayed w/friends we haven’t seen in years. That’s a story I need to write a post about, how to really make friends. Anyway, the roads were fine. A bit patchy, but not bad at all. Although I did have a moment of panic when we came around a curve and the visibility was really poor. Oh crap! I thought. What have we gotten ourselves into? thankfully, it was just blowing the stuff that was already on the ground.

Friday we got up and made our way to Peoria, three hours away. The farther north we went, the deeper the snow and drifts became. And the more blowing snow was on the ground. It was that fine,powdery, dry snow that just kept going right on across the highway, mostly. There were some ugly spots that made me bite my lip. Oh, and the cloudy, gray, bleak, snow-covered landscape that is just so dreary doesn’t help anything. I’m getting cold just thinking about what it looked like!

We made it fine. although, I have to admit, the texture of the snow was not what I was prepared for. It was dry and crunched under foot, not like what we get here, it’s always wet and slushy.  or layered with sleet. It  was something, that’s for sure.

The wedding was beautiful and it was so nice to see people we don’t get to see often. What I did learn from this, is something I already knew, but now there’s no doubt in my mind: I want to retire to a beach house! I am such a wimp for the cold weather. Last week all I could say to the good people of Siberia was “We’d appreciate it if you would keep your cold air to yourselves!”

Just to make sure you’re with me on all this, we drove 6 hours on Thursday, 3 hours on Friday, Saturday was the wedding, and then home for another 9 hours on Sunday. Yep, hair-on-fire. Oh, and we forgot the hang-up bag at the hotel. Brilliant. Thankfully, my husband’s sister lives near the hotel and picked it up for us and is shipping it to us. Deep breath. Glad it’s over!

***NOTE*** To all of my friends and family, just a little note for you to keep in mind when planning your next wedding: Do it in summer or on a beach if you wanna see my shining face! That is all.

Have a good night.

Merry Christmas!

And what a day it is! We had 6 to 8″ of snow yesterday on top of about 1″ of sleet and the FIRST ever blizzard warning for our state! It is definitely one that we will be talking about for a long time to come.

I am very thankful that we don’t have work and school to worry about missing today. We are able to just spend time together playing and hanging out. Enjoying each other for a bit. Later, when the windchill isn’t in the single digits, we’ll go out and build snowmen and have some fun outside and then come in for hot cocoa with loads of marshmellows!

My living room is strewn with the remains of at least an hour or two’s worth of wrapping, clothes, toys, random and miscellaneous stuff and a few lonely presents still under the tree waiting for the snow to clear so we can venture out and deliver them to their intended recipients. It essentially looks like a department store threw up, yeah, I think that’s a pretty good description, just because of the sheer variety of things lying about. Shoes, Lego’s, candy, Nerf guns, books, video games, board games. Wow! What a haul. I even really tried to scale back this year. Honestly, I think I was able to scale back a bit, but it still looks like my kids made out like bandits!

Me, my gift was spending time with them and seeing the pure joy on their faces and thinking about the families of the children I purchased for from the Angel Tree.  How the kids’ faces must have lit up seeing the presents under the tree, if they had one, and the joy on the parents’ faces knowing someone cared enough to help them in a time of need.

Now if we could just keep the feeling of love and caring going all year long, how wonderful that would be.

I hope this finds your heart full of love and your home full of friends and family sharing this wonderful day. I wish you the Merriest of Christmases and a blessed New Year!

I’m dreaming of a …..

White Christmas! Yay! It’s so exciting! Here in the southern part of the country, our Christmases are normally brown, or yellow, the color of dormant Bermuda grass. And normally fairly warm, in the 40’s to 50’s.

Not this year! We are gearing up for a big storm that could dump between 4 and 12 inches of snow on us, depending on location and path of the storm! It’s very exciting for several reasons. The last white Christmas we had here was in 2002, which means this will be my daughter’s first since she was born in 2003.

Everyone is off work today and tomorrow, and the weekend, with the exception of my hard-working husband, who, of course, has to work today and the weekend.

We are very much looking forward to building snow men, having snow ball fights, and just enjoying the snow, since it’s not uncommon for us to go an entire winter without snow. I’m just glad it’s going to be snow rather than ice. We’ve had our share of that the past few years and I could live the rest of my life without an ice storm and be perfectly happy. Ice storms are not fun, at all and anyone who tells you they are is lying to your face!

So…Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!